Heavy iron battering rams hammered against the outer palisade of the Sunken Cinnabar Mine.
The massive cedar timbers of the main gate shuddered under each blow, sending clouds of red dust raining down over the defensive trench. Beyond the spiked wooden logs, twenty heavily armored mercenaries and their captain shouted crude insults, their iron-plated broadswords clattering against rectangular tower shields.
At their front stood Captain Goran, a hulking Iron Bone Peak veteran with a jagged scar across his shaven scalp.
“Open the gate, Vance dogs!” Captain Goran roared, waving a parchment scroll stamped with Branch Master Orson’s official crimson seal. “By order of the Nine-Cauldron Guild, your furnace rights are suspended! Pay two thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones in retroactive tariffs right now, or we burn the timber shafts and bury every miner alive!”
Behind the palisade, three hundred mine guards stood in tight defensive formations.
They gripped their mining pikes and iron shovels with white-knuckled intensity, their faces pale under their leather helmets. Most were simple miners and town militia, completely outmatched by Orson’s hardened mercenaries.
Sera Thorne walked the defensive catwalk above the gate, her ash spear resting casually against her shoulder.
“Hold your positions,” Sera commanded the guards in a cool, steady tone. “Keep your pikes braced in the timber chinks. Nobody opens the latch, and nobody shoots an arrow until I give the order.”
